Triplicity

by J Mercer

[moraa]

I thoroughly enjoyed Triplicity by J. Mercer and I have to say that I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who wants a fun, short, enjoyable read to keep them occupied for a few hours. It didn’t have me on the edge of my seat but it definitely kept me interested.

Triplicity is a book about 3 teenagers who make friends with each other while on a one-week cruise. The story follows Navy, a preacher’s daughter with a semi-attentive mother, an intense fear of germs and a headstrong attitude. Isaiah is a cowboy looking to escape his grandmother’s clutches and make it back to the ranch his father worked on before all hell came loose and Jesse is struggling to cope with the loss of his mother who has decided to leave both him and his father for a better life.

Bern is also mentioned quite a bit though he’s no main character. He’s portrayed as gay which bumped the book up on my scoreboard because I’m a fan of representation though I wish there could have been more ethnic diversity aside from Danilo, the Philippine, and that one Australian bride mentioned close to the conclusion.

A string of thefts is committed on the ship and it’s up to the protagonists to prove their innocence on more than one occasion. As with anything else in life, it’s not smooth sailing (pun intended) and it’s not long before they find themselves tangled in a web they unknowingly created. With everything from comedy and romance to suspense, this book has a number of things working for it.

Each one of characters is facing their own battle and what I really enjoyed about this book was the characterisation. It’s not easy to juggle several characters, especially when each one of them has a consistent POV (point of view), but the author did it expertly in this case. I particularly enjoyed Navy’s headstrong character and her unwillingness to compromise her integrity for anything, even if someone really close to her betrayed her trust.

I also enjoyed Isaiah’s POV much as he was portrayed as self-serving and indifferent to other’s problems. I felt like his character would have benefited from something akin to a redemption arc but after seeing the turn taken by one of the antagonists, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it reduced to something trivial.

It’s also worth mentioning that I really enjoyed the writing style used in this book immensely. The sentence structure was crisp and enchanting with few distractions especially from punctuation which is common in most books.

There were not so many typos in the book that it was difficult to get through but I would have appreciated a bit more editing and perhaps a little more by way of description from the author. Sometimes I struggled with picturing characters and scenes in my head because the language was either lacklustre or insufficient.

Based on everything I’ve mentioned above and my experience with the book, I chose to rate this book 4/5 stars. I would have given it a 5 but for the typos and the lack of a redemption arc for Isaiah did not sit well with me. Nevertheless, I respect the author’s decision to take the story in the direction she did and applaud her good work. I look forward to reading more from her.